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FACING AN ANGRY LABOR: THE AMERICAN PUBLIC INTERPRETS THE SHOEMAKERS' STRIKE OF 1860 James L. Huston On February 22, 1860, as the nation commemorated the birthday of George Washington, the shoemakers of Lynn, Massachusetts, laid down their tools and struck for higher wages, employer recognition of their union as a bargaining agent, and, more generally, for the "rights of labor." The mood of the strikers was initially festive and amicable, the shoemakers listening to a variety of speakers and participating in large parades, but within a few days class antagonism andbitterness poisoned the social atmosphere of the New England town. An early settlement to the dispute was not achieved, and soon the strike spread throughout the region. An indication of the size of the shoemakers' strike was that fully one-half of Massachusetts' cordwainers joined in the turnout, and shoemaking employed more Massachusetts laborers than any other industry in the state. For over two months the strikers maintained their work stoppage; then, in the middle of April, the great Lynn strikejustseemed to evaporate. While the men did receive a wage increase, they failed in their goal of winning recognition of their union.1 The Lynn strike was the largest outburst of labor activity in the nation 's history prior to the Civil War, but it has attracted surprisingly little historical attention until recently. Current research has rescued the story of the Lynn strike from its minorplacein Americanlaborhistoryandhas thereby illuminated the response of the laboring class to the wrenching social changes created by the industrial revolution. Several aspects of the turnout, however, remain neglected. Labor historians have quite properly confined their investigations to the deeds and thoughts of the 1 Blanche Evans Hazard, The Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts Before 1875 (Cambridge, Mass., 1921), pp. 108, 113; George E. McNeill, ed., The Labor Movement: The Problem of To-Day (Boston, 1867), pp. 206-9; Paul Gustaf Faler, "Workingmen, Mechanics and Social Change: Lynn, Massachusetts, 1800-1860" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1971), pp. 459-69; Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 80-84; Boston Post, 22 and 23 Feb. 1860; New York Herald, 12 Mar. 1860. Civil War History, Vol. XXVIII, No. 3 Copyright® 1982 by The Kent State University Press 0009-8078/82/2803-0001 $01.00/0 198CIVIL WAR HISTORY workers, the local community, and the employers.2 But the Lynn strike also occurred during a period of intense sectionalrancor andata time of general labor unrest. Moreover, the event was of such an unusual magnitude that it elicited comment from all parts of the Union. In the deluge of opinions about the cordwainers' walkout, Americans revealed their preoccupation with the slavery issue, but they also disclosed their understanding of and their solutions to "the labor question." There were several circumstances surrounding the Lynn strike which gave the event a wide applicability to the issues of the day. One of the most pressing matters facing the nation was the sectional struggle over the fate of slavery. The Lynn strike commenced when sectional passions were inflamed. A scant five months prior to the walkout, John Brown had seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. In the wake of Brown's insurrection, quickly extinguished by the authorities, southerners had clamored for action to demonstrate to northerners how gravely they viewed the incident. When Congress convened in December, southerners and northern Democrats blocked the election ofJohn Sherman to the Speakership of the House because of his endorsement of Hinton Rowan Helper's The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, a book which advocated the abolition of slavery and one which many felt embodied the ideas that motivated John Brown. One other activity in addition to congressional political agitation appealed to southerners as a means of impressing Yankees with the seriousness of the situation: southerners felt they could tame the northern radical spirit by reaching into the northern pocketbook. Thus, in the waning months of 1859, many southerners called for and began the implementation of a boycott ofnorthern products, a nonintercourse movement .3 Since the Panic of 1857, southerners had believed, with considerable justification, that their staples had...

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